Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report

As predicted, a Life Time fitness center, a "crazy luxe" gym (or a self-described "athletic country club" ), and the associated Life Cafe opened last Friday, April 19 at the base of 18 Sixth Avenue (B4, aka Brooklyn Crossing), and rising three floors. From Atlantic & Sixth. Photos: Norman Oder The Life Time Atlantic Avenue club is  open  5 am to 11 pm weekdays, 7 am to 10 pm weekends. Memberships  start at  $299 a month, but $269 for those 26 and under and those 65 or older. (Chelsea Piers, two long blocks away, doesn't publicly post its rates, but one Redditor reported $219/month. There are discounts for people living at 595 Dean above that club.) Liquor license pending The Life Cafe has applied for a license from the State Liquor Authority to serve wine, beer, and cider, according to a notice in the window.  According to Community Board 2, the cafe qualified for an automatic waiver last month, under our definition of an "Umbrella Operator," an

Might the state's recently approved 485-x tax incentive re-start Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park? Of course not. Remember, there's an expensive platform, and fines for missing affordable housing to be reckoned with. Zone A in yellow, Zone B in orange  (Department of City Planning) Might it help any potential bidder or developer better assess the bottom line regarding future investment? Surely. A 421-a successor Future buildings would qualify under 485-x ( bill text ), a successor to the since expired 421-a, as a "Very large rental project," defined as a site in in Zone A or Zone B, which includes the Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park site, with 150 or more rental units. The carrot: a 40-year exemption from property taxes. That's more than the most recent iteration of 421-a , which for Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park buildings offered a 25-year full exemption, and ten years of exemption applied to the 30% affordable units, at 130% of Area Median Income (AMI).  (Note that the an

Last week, the updated 2024 New York City Area Median Income (AMI) surfaced on the website ( link ) of the city Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), with an astounding rise of nearly 10% over 2023. So 100% of AMI for a four-person household is now $155,300, up from $141,200 in 2023 . (It was $83,900 in 2014!)  The 2023 figure was a 5.7% increase over $133,400 in 2022, which represented an 11.8% increase over $119,300 in 2021, as I wrote in April 2022. The corresponding income bands for 2023 are below. "Low-income" conundrum That also means that many households at 80% of AMI, the threshold considered "low-income," can now earn six figures: the income limits are $86,960 for one person, $99,940 for two people, $111,840 for three people, and $124,240 for four people. Keep in mind that AMI depends on better-off suburban counties and, especially, the High Housing Cost Adjustment (HHCA), which ANHD, the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Deve

Weren't Half the "Affordable" Apartments Supposed to Be Family-Sized? ( link ) Well, in floor area, but they haven't come close. Studios and 1-bedrooms predominate.

 Weekly Digest #18: This Newsletter Gets Results ( link ). Empire State Development updates its housing analysis. Will new state housing policy help re-start the project?

This is the second of two articles on the April 18 meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), charged to advise on the project and monitor obligations. The first concerned the foreclosure auction, likely to be postponed, and the AY CDC budget passage. OK, I was right.  After Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, on March 26 released an Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Affordable Housing Analysis that prompted questions from me, they went back and corrected it. The correction, below, acknowledges a shift at 535 Carlton of eleven middle-income units to moderate-income ones, though it doesn't explain--as I had reported and two AY CDC directors noted--that it was done to enable significant tax savings at the condo building 550 Vanderbilt down the block, awkwardly yoked in a "zoning lot." The revised chart also reclassifies 24 studios at 662 Pacific as middle-income, not moderate-income; though the

This is the first of two articles on the April 18 meeting of the Atlantic Yards Community Development Corporation (AY CDC), charged to advise on the project and monitor obligations. The second concerned a revised affordable housing analysis. The meeting was brief and mostly uneventful--though my update tomorrow will address the effort by Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversees/shepherds the project, to update its official affordable housing chart. Notably, ESD officials said they had no expectation that the foreclosure auction of the rights to six development sites over the Vanderbilt Yard, scheduled for April 30 but already postponed twice, would proceed, as the entity controlling the debt has not presented a potential developer to them. Budge approved With a quorum, the AY CDC directors were finally able to approve--as they were precluded form doing, at their March 26 meeting--of approving the body's $250,000 budget, which is provided by the developer,

As I've written, the foreclosure auction of developer Greenland USA's interest in six development sites over the Vanderbilt Yard has been postponed twice, most recently until April 30 . It's likely to be postponed again. After all, there are a lot of complications, including a winning bidder's obligation to comply with project requirements--or to evade them--regarding affordable housing liquidated damages, and more. That likely involves negotiation with Empire State Development (ESD), the state authority that oversee/shepherds the project. And yesterday, ESD reps said no developer has surfaced. If a bidder does emerge, it's also worth looking at the conditions imposed by ESD on such a transfer. One unit, or two? First, note that, while the six development sites might be seen as a unit, they represent two separate auctions: one for the sites B5-B8, the collateral for the $249 million "Atlantic Yards II," and another for B9-B10, the collateral for the $100 m